Dale Earnhardt Jr. spoke out in Michigan on Friday before the race and NASCAR responded by blowing off Junior's comments by saying that Junior is a struggling team out of reach of the Chase for the Championship that is frustrated by his lack of success. What Junior has to learn is this isn't his Father's NASCAR anymore. Mike Helton is running the show with Brian France sitting back out of the spotlight while his Grandfather's and Father's legacy is transformed into the new N-O-T (NASCAR of Tomorow).

Earlier this year NASCAR held a meeting with the owners about the status of the new COT and from what leaked out of the closed door meeting, there were concerns and ideas suggested. NASCAR decided after the meeting to do nothing other than the double-file restarts following cautions. NASCAR declined to make any adjustments to the cars.

So, after a few months and possibly prompted by a season full of struggles, Junior decided that it was time to say something and he thought his point of view should be heard.

"NASCAR could be a little more urgent in improving our product," Earnhardt said. "The ultimate result is to create exciting racing that the fans will enjoy, that the drivers will enjoy so everybody's happy. And that should be our quest - even when things are good, you know?"

"The double-file restarts give us the opportunity to be exciting for only a moment, and we need to figure out how we can maintain that throughout the entire race," Earnhardt said.

"I feel like, especially right now, we need to really, really try to turn over every stone, and that includes where we are with this COT and where we feel like its development is and where we feel like its future goes," Earnhardt said.

I can understand Junior's situation, whether it was fueled by frustration from a tough season or just the fact that nothing was done following the NASCAR meeting despite ideas and concerns that were expressed in the meeting. Overall, why have the meeting if nothing is done following the expressed concerns and ideas? So, somebody may have to do something to express the need for concerns to be addressed. Junior took it upon himself to make NASCAR aware that those concerns weren't forgotten, but yet he may have been tactful not to come out and reveal anything from the meeting.

My thought though is that NASCAR has what they wanted with the change to the COT. This thought process I have is based on the following comment by Mike Helton in response to Junior's comments.

"I think Dale Jr.'s comments are driven by the fact that he'd like to have more adjustability in the car to get it to where he can do better on the racetrack. If we did that, everybody gets that, and he's still going to be up against that with what he's up against today. I've got the utmost respect for Dale Jr. He wants to be better. We want to be better. But we have to make decisions based on everyone in the garage."

Junior didn't get specific about what he was referring to, but Helton knows what was dicussed in the meeting I mentioned earlier as he was there for it and so he would have an idea what Junior was talking about.

Helton believes Junior was talking about the lack of adjustability in the new COT. Helton believes that Junior would be in the same position with more adjustability because everybody would have more adjustability. Unfortunately, what Mr. Helton fails to grasp in that is that it is what you do with that more adjustability. NASCAR claims that it is a team sport, which I don't disagree with, but when you give a team more options it then has to rely on its talents as a team to do well. Now, I don't mean to down-play or upgrade the talent of Junior or his team. We don't know for sure whether Junior's team would improve their situation if their talent was more of a factor in their results because NASCAR has limited their options with the lack of adjustability. Perhaps they'd be worse than they currently are and maybe they'd be better.

Also, the fact that Helton wants "to make decisions based on everyone in the garage" tells me that they want everybody to be limited to allow the teams with less talent to have a better chance. NASCAR loves parity and that means they have to pull the haves back to the have nots and with the COT they are doing it by limiting the adjustability. This strategy is evident by other actions by NASCAR in recent years. NASCAR implemented the Chase for the Championship, which at its inception pulled the point leader back to within 50 points of tenth place with ten races to go in the season. Later, they modified this rule to include 12 teams and removed the 50 point gap and changed that to 10 points per victory. Now, with the 2009 season featuring 13 winners in 23 races, that point gap from first to 12th should be interestingly small.

I also don't disagree with the Chase for the Championship from a business point of view as it has to be more difficult to sell tickets when the championship has already been decided weeks before. But, to fix that problem they had to pull the point leader back to their competition with ten races to go in the season.

NASCAR has also with the introduction of the frozen field when the caution waves introduced the free pass and now with the double-file restarts they have the wave around group that gets to pass the pace car under caution if they don't pit during the caution to gain a lap they may have lost earlier in the race. Both of these rules keep a larger number of slower cars on the lead lap for the finish and increases the amount of points a team might lose if they have a late race problem to overcome.

There seem to be a lot of fuel mileage races lately and the reason for that is track position. With so many cars on the lead lap, pitting late in the race for four tires means you have a lot more cars to pass with those four fresh tires. Therefore, the pit strategy becomes pit the earliest you think you can so that you are the first to pit and when others stop during later cautions, it puts them deeper into the field. What ends up happening is the leaders are in fuel conservation mode and the teams with fresher tires are stuck in traffic and the drama of the race isn't a competitive race to the checkered flag, it's a gamble on how much fuel the leaders can save to stretch it to the finish.

Overall, the drive hard and pull away from the field days in each race with the objective to dominate the point lead and become champion are over. Instead of a talented driver and crew showing their talent, we have a rush on batteries for the crew chiefs' calculators. The new thing is track position, which leads to fuel mileage races where teams gamble trying to make it to the checkered flag. The old days are gone and the sun has come up on a new day in NASCAR.